October 2017

Mundo vs. Puma felt like the perfect culmination to their rivalry, but this match right here felt like the perfect culmination to Lucha Underground as a whole up to now. Prince Puma, the first champion of the company, the face of the company, THE man of the company from the 1st episode on going against the fan favorite, the absolute killer that is Pentagon DARK. Just after the match vs. Mundo where he gave his all to save his career & win that title he built. Right when the bell rang this reminded me why LU is the coolest goddamn thing in wrestling when done right - the fans were screaming the signature warcry of Pentagon; "CERO MIEDO! " as the tired & wounded, su…

I'm starting to really enjoy La Rosa Negra. She was always improving during her runs in Stardom and consistently shows a lot of personality in the ring. Here, she's certainly capable of keeping up with Arisa in a long match. The match does get a bit flat at the finish because Rosa doesn't really get any good nearfalls so you have don't have any real belief that she is going to win in the end. This is still a good showing though and it's nice to see Arisa get to work a singles match again after spending the summer working tags. ***1/2

This is Sareee's last match as a member of the SEAdLINNNG roster. You can tell how much she meant to the promotion by the fact that she comes out to no fanfare and jobs to a simple lariat from Yoshiko. Otherwise, this is a super fun joshi trios match. They keep up the pace of the match up the whole way with some nice double/triple teams included. The sequences between Sareee/Kobayashi and Mizunami/Yamashita were particularly impressive. ***3/4

Finals of the 2017 Leyenda da Plata. First two falls are typical modern lucha, just rushed through but with a nice dive in each. The third fall is fantastic, with lots of heat and great near falls. Caristico hits several great dives including a standing one over the barricade into the crowd. Volador Jr wins with a top rope huracanrana. Not an all time classic but definitely a fun match worth watching to get an idea of modern CMLL. Both of these guys deserve more credit and attention in my books. ***1/2

I didn't like the first two matches in Webster/Cage + Brooks/Haskins at all, so out comes the best wrestler in the world to stop the streak of awful matches! This is, so far, my favorite PWG Trevor Lee performance & match. Loved his attack on Janela during the introductions & that set the formula for rest of the match - Trevor beat the crap out of Joey in fantastic fashion while Janela had some awesome, explosive comebacks. Loved Trevor's trashtalk throughout w/ him mocking Joey's "WHAT AM I?" yell, his cocky confidence was also awesome & the moment when Janela starts to fire up & Trevor just grabs his goddamn nose was so great. Excellent match. ****1/4

This was exactly the match I wanted these two guys to have - just an excellent BIG BOY spotfest between two BIG BOYS in Jonah Rock & Keith Lee. All of their big, signature moves had that sweet extra impact to them because of the size of the big lads. Just bomb after bomb after bomb. Great stuff. ****

WALTER vs. ZSJ was a classic, but goddamn this was even better. The best match of both guys' careers, PWG MOTY, one of the best matches of the year & one of the greatest matches in PWG history. Loved the Student vs. Mentor dynamic w/ the history between Chuckie & Ricochet - they told a terrific story with that. Ricochet's work over the leg of Chuck was awesome & Chuckie sold it like a boss. The 1st half is centered around that leg work quite a bit, and after the restart, the drama goes through the roof. Chuck taking off the top rope was great, that & he in general did a great job selling the desperation of not being able to stop Ricochet. Just an absolute …

An absolutely excellent match, just as expected. Obviously there was a lot of hype for this one w/ Big Dave giving it the full 5, the live reports saying it truly is one of the all-time great matches in PWG & the preview clip of it looking great - and it lived up to that hype. WALTER & Zack beat the shit out of one another in this classic; you got WALTER as the amazing dominant bigger man throwing ZSJ around & chopping him with those sick chops of his - and then you got Zack as the tremendous underdog chopping him down with those great strikes of his + trying to outsmart the bigger man w/ his great mat, submission oriented tactics. Fantastic match. ****1/2

This is a good plunder match. I like Sasaki a lot but other than the submission match with Togo, I struggled to get into his extreme title matches because it's not a style I like a lot. This still has a lot of downtime, which is what keeps me from getting into these matches but I thought it build really well around a handful of big spots. For example, HARASHIMA's missed somato or him kicking the ladder into Sasaki's stomach earlier, which I thought was pretty clever. Sasaki fails to hit the elbow drop until he gets the big ladder, good finish. There's also a good post-match brawl after this, probably the coolest thing Soma Takao has done.

Not a great match but it stood out. Would be an average DDT tag match if Suzuki and Sakaguchi didn't go kind of wild. Their exchanges just happens at a different pace from the first time they're against each other and there's some sense of panic coming from Sakaguchi frantically trying to close the guard on Suzuki. Later on, Suzuki just crosses the ring to brawl with Sakaguchi while Akito is doing his stuff. Suzuki dumping Sakaguchi out of the ring and killing him with forearms is probably the best part of the match. It even feels like some of this wasn't planned but Suzuki throws himself into Sakaguchi's hip tosses and strikes later on, so I think it was. Higuchi is goo…

Cho-un Shiryu & Masahiro Takanashi vs. Riho & Mitsuru Konno This was a nice match, nice intergender violence. Masahiro is a glorious asshole in these matches, I like the moment where he blindsides Konno during her martial arts posedown with Shiryu. Riho & Konno's reprisals were strong, the assisted crossbody was an awesome spot. Shiryu finishes Konno with a unique submission hold that looked like a Gory special into a standing cloverleaf. ***1/4

Regina di WAVE Championship: Misaki Ohata © vs. Hiroe Nagahama I thought Ohata would pull something out of Nagahama, but that did not happen. Instead, she smothered Nagahama in an aggressive way, not allowing her to mount much offense. Nagahama's comebacks were weak -- she's still in the dropkick phase despite having wrestled for 3 years. Fortunately, she didn't get much. One thing I can credit Nagahama for is her flexibility; Ohata was really cranking back on those submission holds. This was high end junior punishment. ***1/2

Sometimes all you need to have a great match is two great athletes having a competitive, physical back & forth battle just to prove who the better man is. And that's exactly what we got here. The battle of the former Bullet Club bosses featured a red hot atmosphere, that great back & forth, competitive action + great bumping & selling. The post-match Too Sweet was also amazing. Excellent match. ****1/4

First of all, I really liked Angle coming out with The Shield gear on. A wonderful character touch since Angle used to do goofy shit like that all the time during his first WWE run. Then the actual match - it was such a cluster, but I really loved it. Ambrose & Rollins were on fire from start to finish - super strong performances by them, The Miz played his role to absolute perfection & the rest of the guys did their parts very well too. I liked all the twists & turns - Angle getting out of the match after getting destroyed by Braun was great & his eventual comeback with his own music was a goosebumps worthy moment - him just throwing all the bad guys arou…

This match came about after Oedo Tai win over Queen's Quest at the last Stardom Korakuen Hall show and is the main event of Kagetsu's self-produced show. This really felt like a touring champion taking on the local star type match. Io controls most of the match by working over Kagetsu's neck, forcing Kagetsu to go all in with big moves in order to stay in the match. They do a great job of ramping things up during the stretch run to provide an exciting finish. Easily Io's best match since her return in August. ****

Really great David vs. Goliath bout. WALTER on the offense is amazing - he displayed those beautiful German Suplexes, Butterfly Suplexes, that deadly chokehold of his & of course those vicious, sick chops. David Starr has been pretty hit or miss ever since I started getting more familiar with his work - here he was an absolute hit. Loved the energy he brought & him working over the hand of WALTER to try & take away those chops was brilliant. WALTER sold that really well too. Great psychology & performances by both. ****

ICE×∞ Championship #1 Contendership Four Way: Akane Fujita vs. Hiiragi Kurumi vs. Maika Ozaki vs. Nori DATE What a wild ride, I did not expect this from a joshi 4WAY. It was non-stop bomb throwing with great pacing; all of the tandem spots felt organic. Maika and Nori close the match after the other two are eliminated, and I thought they delivered big. I was so proud of Maika when she got the win, big moment for her career. ****

Arisa Nakajima & Manami Toyota vs. Hana DATE & Tsukasa Fujimoto My fucking goodness, Arisa was on fire in this match. She revisits her feud with Fujimoto, and then she's going at it with Hana DATE. Both hate-filled encounters. Toyota stayed out of much of it and just let Arisa go to work. She was like Arisa's giant guardian angel who was there when she was needed. Incredible stuff here. **** Edit: Title should be 'Arisa Nakajima & Manami Toyota vs. Hana DATE & Tsukasa Fujimoto (Ice Ribbon, 10/29/2017)'

Regina Di WAVE Championship: Misaki Ohata © vs. Maruko Nagasaki Ohata's obviously capable of great things, but she has a formula that she sticks to and there was no variety to her performance here. It was every Ohata control segment you've ever seen. Nagasaki was where things shined, but she got so little that it wasn't enough to bring the match up. **

Hikaru Shida vs. Rina Yamashita If Rina wins with the Splash Mountain, she will inherit the move from Dynamite Kansai (who was watching on commentary). Shida ambushes Rina at the start and tries to hit the move herself -- this was the highlight of the match. Shida's workover could have been better, and Rina's comeback felt completely empty. The pacing was off, too. Disappointing match. They had a much better one in WAVE last year. bad

OZ Academy Openweight Championship: Hiroyo Matsumoto © vs. Yoshiko Standard Hiroyo style main event with back and forth movez, but Yoshiko is an interesting enough opponent to make things feel fresh (for me, anyway). Hiroyo's trying everything to hold on to her belt, digging deeper within her moveset and going back to the drawing board a couple of times, but Yoshiko keeps returning fire. There's a strong sense of struggle; good selling too. ***1/2

Absolutely really, really fun match. The Invisible man is over brother and bringing the workrate showing shades of The Four Pillars of All Japan Pro Wrestling, Daniel Bryan, Yoshihiko, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Batista.Cabalistico was good as well in this match. I highly recommend this match, one of my favorite my matches this year. Match Rating - Great